Israel’s self-appointed guardians are hard at work
JVL Introduction
Venues hosting pro-Palestinian events face growing pressure from “pro-Israeli genocide vigilantes”, says Lara Sheehi, an academic quoted in the Novara Media article posted below.
Sheehi was a clinical psychology professor at George Washington University when, in January 2023, Israel lobby group StandWithUs complained to the US education department that she had discriminated against Jewish students by refusing to accept their definition of antisemitism. Since then she’s been at the sharp end of a “global smear campaign … by Zionists”. Now UK Lawyers for Israel has joined in the campaign to cancel Sheehi, attempting to stop an event involving her at the Freud Museum in north London. On this occasion they failed. But UKLFI has a long history, which it proclaims proudly on its website, of censoring pro-Palestinian expression. An infamous example is the removal of artwork by Gazan children in a hospital in London, following unfounded allegations that they made Jewish patients feel “vulnerable, harassed and victimised”.
More self-appointed guardians of morality have been at work in Manchester, where the venue HOME cancelled a cultural event, “Voices of Resilience,” after a local pro-Israel organisation alleged, without evidence, that one of the Palestinian writers participating was “a ‘confirmed antisemite’ and a ‘holocaust denier’.
Relatively new to this circuit is the National Jewish Assembly, founded in 2022 to bolster Zionist attempts to protect Israel from criticism. It is hounding the Rio Cinema in Dalston, east London, for taking a principled stand over Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Never to be outdone, the Campaign Against Antisemitism has persuaded a Labour council in North Tyneside to take down a Palestinian children’s peace mural which graced a wall outside Tynemouth railway station from 2012. The CAA said a fanciful sea creature among the images portrayed resembled an octopus and therefore “evoked historical antisemitic tropes”. A group of Jews calling for the mural to be restored said this was “another example of how antisemitism and Jewish history are being abused and weaponised in support of anti-Palestinian views.”
The article below looks in some detail at the Lara Sheehi case.
NWI
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Thu 28 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
Israel Lobbyists Tried to Cancel an Event on Mental Health and Palestine – but Failed
‘Psychoanalysis at large often takes an anti-Palestine position.’
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I wonder how they tracked down a relatively tiny event?
And if, as alledged, Sheehi has an antisemitic history, I take it they reported her to the police at the time. Not!
Bullies just lurve bullying people.
Freud himself had no sympathy for Zionism. See https://blog.nli.org.il/en/freud_on_zionism/ for example. “…“I do not think that Palestine could ever become a Jewish state, nor that the Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be prepared to have their holy places under Jewish care. It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened land. But I know that such a rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and the financial support of the wealthy.”
After the 1929 riots he was asked, amongst other prominent world Jewish figures to offer support. His reply was negative: “[T]he baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.”
He wrote to Arnold Zweig, that the choice of Eretz Yisrael is “not a good omen” and that “I have never been a Zionist nor do I think I shall become one”, subsequently adding,“It seems to me that in the last few years a shift has taken place in the attitude of our Jewish youth towards the concept of Zionism. They seem to have become disillusioned with it, and it is not difficult to see why. Zionism has ceased to be a movement and has become a dogma.”
More controversially he saw Zionism as “a neurotic attempt to restore an old love rather than find a new one, a romantic dream destined to fail.” https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/the-judaism-and-zionism-of-sigmund-freud/2023/10/12/
The article states: ‘Sheehi was a clinical psychology professor at George Washington University when, in January 2023, Israel lobby group StandWithUs complained to the US education department that she had discriminated against Jewish students by refusing to accept their definition of antisemitism.’ I would like to know what ‘their definition’ refers to. Was it the IHRA one, or something else?
Rory Allen, in reply (above 2 Apr 14:28) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/16/george-washington-university-professor-antisemitism-palestine-dc helps a bit to elucidate. “Inside the war tearing psychoanalysis apart: ‘The most hatred I’ve ever witnessed'”
BTW (this is me now) PsychAn almost from the moment of its birth has been a hotbed of internal strife. It’s got the same name, but it’s practically unrecognisable from its 19th century origins. Most of our thinking is at an unconscious level, but “The Unconscious” is not a *thing* and it’s not a Freudian “unconscious”, still less a Jungian one. My man, for what it’s worth, is Otto Rank. But it’s naive to think it’s all dynamic depth psychology without the behavioural aspects and without the social, political, economic, cultural ocean in which we all swim.